Discipline: Political Science
Element in the theory of justice of American political theorist John Rawls (1921-2002).
Conditions for just social life can be sketched if people are imagined in an 'original position' where they decide upon social rules whilst behind a 'veil of ignorance' which prevents their knowing anything about their own situation in the hypothesized society.
Source:
David Miller et al., eds, The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought (Oxford, 1987)